Peter Guttridge - The Thing Itself

As she sprawled on the floor, winded, he grabbed her ankles and dragged her back to him then hooked his forearms under her armpits, lifted her and threw her on the bed again.

‘Please,’ she gasped as he tore at her clothes.

‘It’s not you, sweetheart. It’s your father. He’s not picking up his messages. So this is a special one.’

‘Please,’ she moaned as he fell on her with all his weight. ‘Don’t.’

‘No chance of that, darling.’

His accent was northern. His breath smelt of alcohol. That much she took in. He clawed at her underwear. She managed to take a breath. Got a hand under the pillows. Touched plastic.

‘OK, OK. Do what you want but please don’t hurt me. I won’t resist.’

His expression changed and for the first time she felt him really press against her. He slapped her face. Hard.

‘You won’t resist? Where’s the fucking fun in that?’

Ex-Chief Constable Bob Watts had been at his father’s house in Barnes Bridge on and off for days. His father, Donald, better known as the thriller writer Victor Tempest, had suffered a stroke.

Watts was sunk in his father’s wingback chair gazing blankly out of the long window above the Thames when his phone rang. He glanced at the name on its screen. Sarah Gilchrist.

‘Sorry, Bob, but I thought you’d want to know. Kate Simpson has been attacked. She’s in hospital.’

Watts swallowed.

‘How bad is she?’

‘Bad. Attempted rape. Badly beaten.’

Watts clenched his jaw.

‘Who did it?’

‘Nobody she knows but she does know why.’

Gilchrist seemed to take forever to continue.

‘And?’ Watts said.

‘It was a warning to your old mate, unemployed former government spin doctor, William Simpson.’

Watts walked over to the window. A fog lay over the Thames, obscuring Barnes Bridge entirely.

‘Bob?’

‘I’m here,’ he said, pressing the tip of his nose against the cold glass and closing his eyes.

‘She killed the guy who attacked her.’

Watts sighed.

‘How did she kill him?’

Gilchrist was silent.

‘Sarah?’

‘A volt gun.’

An old man pushing a pram hobbled through the mist on the other side of the road. Watts frowned at the odd sight.

‘A what?’

‘A rather more lethal taser. But not usually a death-dealer.’

‘How did she get that?’

Gilchrist was silent again.

‘Fuck,’ Watts said.

‘I had a bad time once.’ Gilchrist sounded defensive. ‘Saw the need for protection. When I was staying with Kate, I told her about it. Left it with her.’

‘So she killed this creep with an illegal weapon.’

‘It can be handled,’ Gilchrist said. Watts said nothing. ‘It can be handled,’ she repeated.

‘I wasn’t thinking that,’ Watts said.

‘What, then?’

‘Killing someone is a hell of a thing to deal with.’

‘You and Tingley don’t seem to have any problems.’

‘I can’t speak for Tingley,’ Watts said shortly. ‘What can you do for her?’

‘Sorry I said that,’ Gilchrist said. ‘We should meet.’

‘Of course,’ Watts said. ‘I’m on my way to Brighton.’

‘Not just about this. We’ve found Bernie Grimes.’

The mist swallowed the old man.

Bob Watts walked along the towpath from his father’s house to Hammersmith Bridge. He’d run the distance there and back at six that morning. Now he passed the odd dog-walker as joggers passed him, but for the most part he was alone with his thoughts.

Not long before his father had fallen ill, Watts had confronted him about his womanizing past. Watts had realized that William Simpson, his erstwhile friend, was his half-brother. Kate Simpson was his niece. He had been puzzling over when — or whether — to tell her. Now was certainly not the time.

He was aware of the screeching of the parakeets high up in the canopy of trees that arched over the path. Escapees, it was said, from some 1940s film made at Twickenham studios. He saw a grey heron, neck elongated, standing still as a statue in the shallows.

He took the tube to Victoria just in time for the fast train to Brighton. He’d left his car at the station a couple of days earlier. He’d forgotten where, of course, but after five minutes’ wandering he located it.

There was an old Archie Shepp CD on the stereo. Goin’ Home , with Horace Parlan on piano. Watts liked dissonance in music. Anarchy, really. That’s how he’d first got into Shepp and his crazy tenor sax. But this was sweet, old-time blues, more Ben Webster than Ornette Coleman. He turned it up loud as he drove to the hospital.

Gilchrist was waiting for him in the foyer. They hugged briefly, awkwardly. Since their brief fling, he knew she felt as unsure as he did about how to be with each other.

She took him in to see Kate Simpson. Her face was broken and bruised.

He thought she wouldn’t want any man near her, but Gilchrist nudged him forward and Kate raised a shaky hand for him to take. Tears welled from her eyes as she held his hand fiercely for a moment before her grip relaxed and her eyes closed.

‘The drugs,’ Gilchrist murmured.

Watts clenched his jaw.

They hugged again when they parted half an hour later. Gilchrist had filled him in on Bernie Grimes and the south of France. Watts was fired up about that but mostly he was thinking of Kate Simpson. Her broken voice. The cuts and the swellings. The tears welling from her eyes as he held her hand.

Watts had been living in an odd little house in the centre of Brighton for a couple of months now. It was one of a handful of cottages around Brighton that had been built by French prisoners during the Napoleonic wars. It was local flint and brick that had then been tarred black. It was on a terrace of four houses, the other three built to match a couple of hundred years later. It was three storeys high but very narrow. It had a small front garden and a private courtyard at the back. The view from the front was of a narrow walkway and the side wall of the Royal Mail sorting office.

It was a ludicrous choice for a big man as it was cramped with low ceilings, but Watts realized he was punishing himself. When his marriage had broken up, he’d first chosen to live in a horrible bungalow. Now this.

When he let himself in, the landline was ringing. It was his wife, Molly, phoning from Canada, where she’d gone to get a perspective on the things that had happened between them.

Molly was his home. He recognized that now. Recognized too that he had totally fucked it up. Not because of his one-night stand with Sarah Gilchrist. Long before then. When he was busy turning his wife to drink and away from him.

He shook his head. He was trying to process what Molly had told him.

‘I’m not coming back.’

She had been staying with her sister in Canada.

‘Well, I guessed that,’ Watts said. ‘I told you it wasn’t necessary. The funeral will be pretty low-key.’

‘I’m not ever coming back.’

Watts thought for a moment.

‘That’s coming straight to the point,’ he said.

‘I’ve met someone.’

‘Oh.’ It was all he could manage.

‘Actually, I met him years ago. A neighbour of my sister. I’ve seen him every year for the fortnight I come here. We don’t communicate the rest of the year. He was married, I was married. Nothing happened between us.’

‘I’m sure,’ Watts said, unsure whether he was being sarcastic.

‘He’s a widower now. We want to try to make a go of it.’

‘I thought we were going to try to make a go of it.’

She was silent for a moment.

‘There’s so much I can’t forgive you for,’ she said. ‘Not just screwing that woman. So much else.’